Gene Tierney was one of many actresses in Hollywood, past and present, who have been so labelled, described as "unquestionably the most beautiful woman in movie history" by studio head Darryl Zanuck.

At the last moment, she paused. “If I was going to die, I wanted to die in one piece, a whole person, and look pretty in my coffin,” Gene Tierney later said. She had, she claimed, no desire to ...